Often
They Had Been Obliged To Travel Along The Edges Of Frightful
Ravines, Where A False Step Would Have Been Fatal.
In one of
these passes, a horse fell from the brink of a precipice, and
would have been dashed to pieces had he not lodged among the
branches of a tree, from which he was extricated with great
difficulty.
These, however, were not the worst of their
difficulties and perils. The great conflagration of the country,
which had harassed the main party in its march, was still more
awful the further this exploring party proceeded. The flames
which swept rapidly over the light vegetation of the prairies
assumed a fiercer character and took a stronger hold amid the
wooded glens and ravines of the mountains. Some of the deep
gorges and defiles sent up sheets of flame, and clouds of lurid
smoke, and sparks and cinders that in the night made them
resemble the craters of volcanoes. The groves and forests, too,
which crowned the cliffs, shot up their towering columns of fire,
and added to the furnace glow of the mountains. With these
stupendous sights were combined the rushing blasts caused by the
rarefied air, which roared and howled through the narrow glens,
and whirled forth the smoke and flames in impetuous wreaths. Ever
and anon, too, was heard the crash of falling trees, sometimes
tumbling from crags and precipices, with tremendous sounds.
In the daytime, the mountains were wrapped in smoke so dense and
blinding, that the explorers, if by chance they separated, could
only find each other by shouting.
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